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Class ^bi_Ei.:rx 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



Kic|)arU En^er^ ^otofeer 



THE ARTS OF LIFE. 

i6mo, $1.25. 
OF BUSINESS. 

i6mo, 50 cents. 
OF POLITICS. . 

i6mo, 50 cents. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York. 



OF BUSINESS 



■Cifte arts of Ofe 


OF BUSINESS 


BY 


RICHARD ROGERS BOWKER 


M 


^^m 


BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1901 



TMf? LiBRARY OF 

Two Ooi-ie3 Received 

OCT. 24 1901 

OOP^"->IGHT ENTRY 

CLASS (Z XXc No. 

COPY a. 






COPYRIGHT, 1900 AND I90I, 

BY RICHARD ROGERS BOWKER. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



Published October^ iqoi. 




OF BUSINESS 

IGNORANT or educated, self- 
taught or schooled, the boy or Facing the 
girl, the man or woman, *' be- ^^^^^ 
gins life,'' — faces the world. 
" The world," it is said, " is all 
before him where to choose/' At first, this 
does not seem true. The world of present 
and personal possibilities is but a part of 
the great world. Yet it is the open door. 
Every road leads everywhere. A boy with 
an "aim in life," and will-power behind the 
aim, has good chance for any goal. The 
girl's choice, of old, was passive ; she had to 
wait for her world till a man should open the 
door for her. But to-day her world also is 
within her choice ; she also may have aim, 
and need not wait the happening man. Now- Choice of 
adays, boy or girl alike may each measurably ^^sy-ness 
decide what his or her busy-ness, work in the 
world, shall be. Free-will steers predesti- 
nation, and purpose builds in and out -from 
environment, as the rudder of the great ship, 
answering to will, controls and directs the 
predestinating forces of steam and wave. 

It is a prime usefulness of education that 
it enables the youth to make a fit choice. 
5 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

Education It used to be assumed that education was 
and Success ^ hindrance to '' success in lif e/^ The great 
merchant was to begin by sweeping out the 
store. The weakling was the proper candi- 
date for college, whence a living might be 
assured for him in the church or other 
*' learned profession.'' A college education 
was thought a handicap against ^' practical *' 
achievement. This superstition is one of the 
husks the world has thrown off. The free 
play of competition has entered all the pro- 
fessions, and all are the better for it. The 
theological seminary can no longer send out 
spiritless souls to inspire spirituality, nor the 
medical colleges weak characters to tell men 
Competition how to get strong. Competition demands 
Chok:e^o£ choice of tools. A man should first know 
Tools to what ** calling '* he is called, by nature, 

by his own nature. We need clay for bricks, 
oak for a ship's keel, willow for baskets, cast 
iron for stoves, wrought iron for shovels, the 
finest steel of finest temper for edge tools. 
There are men of like materials. Competi- 
tion — not that for money, but that of qual- 
ities — is the test of the modern world. It 
rejects alike tool steel in place of clay, or 
clay in place of cast iron. So it rejects from 
commercial success men of too soft nature, 
6 



OF BUSINESS 

of weak will, and from spiritual success men 
of too hard nature, of reckless self-will. First 
of all, then, a man should seek to know what 
he is good for. The tragedies of human life 
are largely from the failures of mis-place- 
ment. Yet ever it is the finer material that 
is of the wider range. Steel can be used in 
place of bricks, but clay cannot be used in 
place of steel. A wise education should have 
taught the youth of what use his material 
may best be in the world. 

In the period of education, all relations are 
personal. Life-activities are concentrated on The World 
the internal development of the human being fti^t-jack- 
— the youth is to make the most of himself, built 
Now relations become social, external — the 
man is to make the most of the world. He 
has been dealing with the laws of personal 
development ; he deals now with the laws of 
social development. He is to do service for 
others, and thus earn his living. Thus the 
busy world, the world of business, is a great 
House-that-Jack-built, ordered under the reign 
of law, in which one service fits in with an- 
other. The science of trade is indeed called 
economics, house-rule, and we must master 
its laws to practice at best advantage the 
7 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

art of business. '* Know thyself — know the 
world/' "know laws — know facts/' are can- 
ons of success. Knowledge is indeed power. 

There is a discussion as between the 
" Old " and "old " and the " new ''schools in economics, 
Schools in b^cause the old advanced laws and applied 
Economics these to facts, while the new seeks facts and 
generalizes these into laws. The difference 
is of method only. The old political econo- 
my is deprecated as philosophic rather than 
historical and theoretic instead of practical, 
emphasizing a narrow self-interest instead of 
the larger good. The old political economy 
indeed thought first of things ; the new eco- 
. nomics thinks first of men — and this is bet- 
ter. But there is no more need of a new 
economics than of a new religion. The truly 
philosophic becomes the historic; true the- 
ory becomes actual practice ; and an enlight- 
ened self-interest is altruistic in high degree. 
The aim of economics is gain. But greed is 
not gain. Selfishness and self-interest are 
not the same. For men cannot live to best 
result except in the light of the larger good. 
Here economics "shades into ethics, and can- 
not be separated from it. 



OF BUSINESS 

In the beginning a man earned his living 
simply, each man for himself. He was inde- Independent 
pendent of all but Nature. He tilled or killed ^^ 
food for himself, tended his own flock, wove 
his own clothes, built his own hut. He de- 
fended himself against the forces of Nature, 
wild beasts, and hostile man. When Nature 
denied rain, sunshine, warmth, to his little 
field or his little flock, he soon starved. He 
had small store, and the wide world could not 
help him. The stronger man made him his 
slave, his dependent. With civil organiza- 
tion, that is, civilization, through the tribe, 
the nation, and now in world-relation, inde- 
pendence gave way to inter-dependence. In- inter- 
dependence, dependence, inter-dependence, ^pendent 
has been the line of progress. Man ex- 
changes. Primitive barter has given place 
to complex commerce. To-day men are 
interdependent, each man upon each other 
man, throughout the world. Foresight 
safeguards. Manufacture transforms. Capi- 
tal stores. Transportation equalizes. The 
weather bureau telegraphs the storm and 
the farmer saves his hay. A forest com- 
mission, preserving trees, prevents droughts 
and famines. Irrigation fertilizes deserts. If 
Nature denies rain and warmth for crops in 
9 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

India or Ireland, the sunshine that is else- 
where in the world, stored in bounteous 
crops, will be brought to their service, pre- 
venting starvation. The cotton of the sub- 
tropical south, the wool of the temperate 
north, kept from harvest to winter, manu- 
factured into cloth, transported the world 
over, clothe the world. The man who 
dressed in skins has a shirt ; he who had 
one has two, and can wash and be clean. 
This is the grand result of the economic 
Free Play of evolution of society, made possible by the 
Competition ^^^^ ^^^^ ^£ competition, under which each 

human particle finds its part in that differ- 
entiation of function which develops the 
social organism in a vast interdependence of 
all parts. But there is another result. In 
the fluid sea, in the fluent quicksands, where 
gravitation is not offset by cohesion, heavy 
things sink. So in economic freedom, the 
men who do not swim, sink. It is this law 
that has compelled man to build boats and 
made him master of all seas. It is this law 
which compels men to struggle for life and 
a living, in a struggle which makes strong. 
All the same, the man who is sinking must 
have a friendly hand into the boat. This hu- 
manity owes him, for his sake — and for its 

10 



OF BUSINESS 

own sake. Otherwise he may overturn the 
boat in his struggles as he goes down. Or- 
ganization, obtaining the beneficences, must 
also mitigate the malversations, of natural 
law. This is an economic as well as a moral 
responsibility. A system which makes the 
few rich, but the many poor, cannot last. 
The winds of heaven soon overturn the tree 
whose roots are not as broad as its top. 

To earn his living, to make the best of 
things, a man must work. He may work The Earth 
with his hands or his head, his muscle or his o^^roduc- 
brains. If he receives by gift, this means tion 
that some one before him has worked, and 
saved. The first step of work is when men 
take from the earth the material on which 
further work is to be done — by tilling fields, 
or digging in mines, or tending flocks that 
feed on the earth, or catching fish in the sea. 
Mother Earth is indeed the mother of wealth ; 
land is the source of production. There is 
no "material'' value which does not origi- 
nate from it. The land is the domain of a 
sovereign — in a kingdom, of the king ; in 
our Union, of each State as representing the 
people. The sovereign gives title to owners 
of land, and by "right of eminent domain'* 
II 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

may by just method take it back from an 
owner for the need of the public. To ** own '* 
land is thus merely to hold the right to use 
it and transfer the title. 

To obtain product the soil must be 
Land and '^worked:'' labor must be applied to land. 
®^^ Some land is better than other : with the 

same labor, it gives product of more value, 
two bushels of potatoes instead of one. The 
owner may let the land be used by a tenant. 
The farmer does not get less or more for the 
potatoes, but the owner gets more " rent.*' 
Rent, then, does not increase the price of 
products, but measures the value of the land. 
Land is also needful to house upon. Its 
rent, then, increases with the proximity of 
people. This increase is called the *^ social 
increment.'' Rent comes, therefore, from 
nature - value or social increment The 
higher value of '^desirable" land is not be- 
cause of the owner or the worker, but from 
Nature or from the people. Thus the doc- 
trine of sovereignty, of eminent domain, over 
land, in the interest of all the people, is a doc- 
trine as fundamental in economics as in the 
theory of the state, and a land tax within the 
limits of rent is the economic method for 
reclaiming for the people the value which 

12 



OF BUSINESS 

Nature or the social organization, and not 
the individual owner or worker, has put there. 

The farmer is the man on whom all of us 
depend for our food, for our clothes, in part The Farmer 
for our shelter. Nearly half of all workers 
are busy in farm-life. With him are the 
woodsman, the miner, the quarryman, the 
hunter, the fisherman, — each doing his part 
singly to extract from Nature the raw mate- 
rial which all men need. The farmer is the 
man most dependent on Nature, least de- 
pendent on men, on whom men most depend. 
He lives close to Nature, in the fresh air, 
in the sunshine, is his own master, — but 
has, in the nature of things, the least help 
from the social organization. Yet labor- His Help 
saving implements, improved seeds, fertil- from Society 
izers, help him to do more work at less 
cost ; the weather bureau forewarns him bet- 
ter than his guess ; the railroad gives him 
the world's market ; the trolley brings him 
closer to his neighbors; the public library 
lends him books ; education lifts his life, 
though it may decrease his content. If 
crops fail elsewhere, he gets the better 
price ; if crops are abundant, the storing, 
packing, canning industries save his sur- 
13 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 



His Work 
by Himself 



His econo- 
mic Gain 



plus ; if his own crops fail, they in turn sup- 
ply him with food. As a better banking 
system is developed, local banks will give 
him more cheaply the credit he needs, until 
his savings make him his own capitalist. 
Still, at the mercy of Nature, seed by seed 
and day by day, he must till his crops and 
tend his stock, doing his own work by him- 
self and seeing its fruition. But there is no 
longer the isolation which of old dulled him 
and drove his wife crazy ; and his life is worth 
living as never before. Competition from 
the West — whose rich lands and broader 
farms, permitting labor-saving machinery on 
a large scale, have produced better crops 
more cheaply — has reduced farming in New 
England, where Massachusetts grew in 1890 
only 1800 bushels of wheat against 119,000 
bushels in i860; but the farmers of New 
England will be the better off from raising 
garden product by "high farming.*' Thus 
even the farmer, most of all subject to the ups 
and downs of Nature, finds economic gain at 
the last in the changing conditions from which 
at first he seems to benefit least and which 
in some cases seem to make his lot and his 
life the harder. Though hard work conceals 
the poetry of his calling, his is the vocation 
14 



OF BUSINESS 

of the golden age, to which all men desire to 
return ; for he deals with life and is its min- 
ister, the alchemist who transmutes dead 
earth into golden grain, and the grass of the 
field into food of the beasts that are the com- 
panions and servitors of man. And in this 
work he finds or should find that inspiration 
of love and service which in highest degree 
only living things can call forth. 

To the raw material from the farm, the 
forest, the mine, the quarry, the waters, Manufac- 
manufacture or handiwork adds value by *^^^ 
changing its form, through successive steps, 
in which the product of one process becomes 
the material of the next, up to the finished 
product. Here modern organization and the 
division of labor reach their largest develop- 
ment ; the worker in the home, the shop, the 
mill, gives place to the operative in the great 
factory, and the individual becomes a minor 
yet an essential and integral part of a huge 
organism. At once the master and the slave The Opera- 
of his machine, less free than the farmer, *^^® 
less dependent on Nature and more on man, 
sheltered from the weather, more sure of 
return, with shortening hours and bettering 
pay as labor gets its increasing share of pro- 
duct, doing but a particle of the completed 
15 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

work, — his life has its good and its ill, bal- 
ancing more and more to the good, except 
as trade depressions, corporate mismanage- 
ment, '^ strikes,'' or other causes or condi- 
tions mostly beyond his individual power to 
control or to mitigate, throw him back upon 
his savings or his 'Muck/' The division of 
labor necessary to get each part done well 
and at least cost, is carried so far that the 
*^hand '' in a great factory cannot see the use 
or the worth of his work, and cannot come 
in touch with the men who direct his labor 
or who buy his product. He cannot feel his 
relation with human affairs. But all these 
workers, each doing his own part, are neces- 
sary in the great House-that-Jack-built, and 
to each is due credit and honor for his work 
well done and opportunity to make the most 
out of his life. 

The transportation industries add value, 
Transporta- not by change of form, but by change of 
place, bringing goods to a place where they 
are more wanted, and carrying passengers 
where they want to go, and also by help of 
telephone and telegraph transporting intelli- 
gence and saving cost of time and distance in 
travel. Their workers, like the farmers, work 
each by himself, yet like the operative each 
i6 



tion 



OF BUSINESS 

is part of a great organism, which depends 
on the alertness and accuracy of each man. 
Day and night, in rain and shine, the rail- 
road man, the seafarer, in tense strain, hav- 
ing lives and wealth in his keeping, does his 
duty, serving all the world. His work is 
entirely the result of modern invention and 
organization, without which it would not 
exist. 

Those engaged in manufactures, a quarter 
of all workers, and in transportation, an The Wage- 
eighth of all, make up with farm-hands, un- ®^^^®^^ 
skilled laborers, and household servants, the 
great body of wage-earners, who get stated 
pay, either for their time or " by the piece." 
The " industrial classes,'' with the farmers, 
count up seven-eighths of all who '^ earn 
their living " by work, and the welfare of 
seven-eighths of the population is directly, 
and of the whole community is indirectly, 
bound up with their prosperity. Their work 
is the foundation of all business, as they are 
the basis of the state. 

He who saves from his earnings is at once 
a capitalist. Capital, like land, is a material. The Capi- 
not human, factor in production, yet also, *^^^^^ 
like land, it is good only for and by human 
17 



Capital the 
Seed of In- 
dustry 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

use. Unlike land, it has human origin, in 
the virtue of frugality, of which miserliness 
is the counterfeit vice. And it is capital, 
savings, which makes human progress pos- 
sible. The seed which the farmer saves to 
sow is capital ; and when famine compelled 
the New England settlers to eat their seed- 
corn, their capital was gone, they had no- 
thing to go on with, death stared them in 
the face. 

Capital is in fact the seed from which 
all industry proceeds ; a man's breakfast, his 
clothes, his house, his tools, the steam- 
engine, the factory, the material on which 
he works, are the pre-requisites for pro- 
duction. Without these, he is a hungry 
savage. With them, all civilization helps 
him do his work. The only panacea for the 
"labor difficulty'* is that in times of prosper- 
ity and good wages frugality should save and 
store for the laborer the capital on which to 
live while he is out of a job, — whether be- 
cause of the new machine, or the bettered 
method, or the slackness of work, — and it is 
to the advantage of the community that wages 
should be high enough to give him margin 
for this saving. If a man has not saved, he 
must let his labor to those who have saved, 
i8 



OF BUSINESS 

or borrow from them money to buy the helps 
by aid of which he can pay, out of his in- 
creased productivity, interest for the use of 
capital and still have more earnings left for 
himself. 

Capital adds value to things by storing 
them till they are wanted, as food for winter Capital adds 
and ice for summer, and it adds value to "^^^® 
men by giving them the wherewithal, as 
tools and material, to work to best advan- 
tage. It is therefore the friend and not the 
enemy, not the destruction but the salva- 
tion, of labor. No one borrows capital unless 
he expects to gain by the loan. Because it 
is measured in money and deposited through 
banks, we think of capital as money only ; 
but interest is paid really for the use of the 
things which money buys. The miser gains 
no interest from the money he uselessly 
hoards, nor can money in banks earn interest 
until it is loaned out for use, nor can "stocks *' 
and " bonds " pay unless their proceeds are 
put to paying use. 

Capital is paid by a share of product, but 
a decreasing share. As wages rise, interest Capital paid 
falls. For with increased product, higher ^^ Interest 
wages and larger profits, there is more mar- 
gin for savings, t^e wealth of the world, its 
19 



and Interest 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

saved capital, increases even beyond indus- 
trial development, there is less proportionate 
demand, and the pay for capital falls. It is 
only where property is insecure or where 
there is risk of loss, as in new communities 
Insurance or in new enterprises, that an insurance pre- 
mium, added as it were in interest, seems to 
make interest high, for on secure investments 
the price of '* securities '' rises until the per- 
centage of return is close to the usual rate of 
interest. The decrease in interest pinches 
the widow and orphan, who must live upon 
the " fixed income *' of past savings, as well 
as the drone in the human hive who lives 
on his father's earnings, but it gives better 
chances to the world's workers. Except 
when capital is '' a drug in the market '* be- 
cause of bad times and lack of business, a 
low rate of interest helps business ; and 
banks, sound, safe, and well managed, shops 
through which capital in the form of money 
is gathered in and let out for use, are, like 
other good stores, a gain to the community, 
tending to reduce the cost of loans as all 
shops tend to reduce prices. 

The industrial organization is a great army 
of peace, which must be officered. The 
^ 20 



OF BUSINESS 

privates, or hand-workers, must work under The Direc- 
direction ; and it is the captain of industry, J°^ °^ Indus- 
the director, the brain-worker, who leads his 
men to success. By directing work to best 
purpose, he makes the most of labor and 
gives workers their best chance, and benefits 
the world. Colt, arranging for his revolver 
the interchangeability of parts, set an ex- 
ample which soon gave to American me- 
chanical products a commanding position in 
foreign markets ; the standardizing of sizes 
and shapes, as of wire, bolts, screws, and 
nuts, by intelligent cooperation of the di- 
recting class, has been of untold practical 
and money value to the world. What the 
director does for the moment, the inventor 
does for all time, — saving labor and better- 
ing the laborer. The welfare of labor has 
kept steady pace with the progress of inven- 
tion, for with each laborer saved there has 
been new opportunity for two. 

Brains also must have its pay ; and the 
intellectual and moral qualities of intelli- The Pay of 
gence, ingenuity, courage, enterprise, integ- ^^^^^^ 
rity, deserve and get high pay. It is the 
combination of all, in rare men, that gets the 
best pay — in the double reward of money 
return and of developed personal character ; 

21 



Profit 



The Direc- 
tor's Share 
of Product 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

for neither intelligence without integrity nor 
integrity without intelligence can win abid- 
ing and entire success. It used to be said 
that rent, wages, and "profit/' — the pay for 
land, labor, and capital, — make up the cost 
of product. But capital is paid for by inter- 
est, and profit is truly the difference between 
cost and price. Out of this difference the 
director, as also the inventor, gets his pay. 
He does not add to the cost of product, but 
lessens it ; utilizing capital, saving labor, in- 
creasing product, decreasing cost, he saves 
alike for the capitalist, the laborer, and the 
consumer. Usually, the director commutes 
this pay from profit into a stated salary, and 
the inventor into an " outright '' or *' royalty '' 
payment, and because also the employer of 
labor usually supplies or obtains the capital, 
or the capitalist employs the director at a 
salary, the interest which is the pay of capital 
and the residual profit from which direction 
gets its pay have been generally confused. 

But it is always on the ability to make profit, 
through the administration or the machinery 
which reduces cost, that the director's pay 
depends. When he mis-directs production, 
so that cost exceeds price, the business fails, 
and there is no place for him. As cost de- 

22 



OF BUSINESS 

creases, and rivals adopt his or better methods 
and machinery, competition reduces prices, 
and profit lessens towards nothing, until a 
new improvement again reduces cost. Thus 
the director gets a decreasing share of pro- 
duct ; yet the enormous growth of business 
with industrial development so aggrandizes 
the total returns as to assure to an able 
manager a large and increasing salary — 
which is not taken from the producer or con- 
sumer but benefits both. With each improve- 
ment the good organizer or administrator by 
so much makes himself unnecessary, but the 
possibiHties of improvement are so inexhaust- 
ible that at each step forward he becomes 
of increasing instead of decreasing impor- 
tance. 

Modern development has indeed evolved 
in this field a new kind of calling, the ex- Theexecu. 
ecutive profession. The skilled executive 
applies his brains — his native powers and 
his utilized experience — to ever-new prob- 
lems in the course of daily business, until 
he develops the capability of applying him- 
self successively or simultaneously to many 
kinds of business, as a lawyer or a doc- 
tor takes up his varied ^* cases.'* This is 
the modern **man of business:'' a great 
23 



tive Profes- 
sion 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

banker, a business lawyer, the head of an 
industrial corporation, the president of a 
university, the bishop of a diocese, gains 
success from qualities which these all have in 
common and which they apply in differing 
environments, rather than to special qual- 
ities connected with the specific environment. 
These men are in great measure interchange- 
able. They will master a new set of facts, of 
circumstances, as a lawyer will master a new 
case. This kind of success involves indeed 
a great danger in personal character. The 
bishop becomes more a secular than a spirit- 
ual person. The banker, dealing with money, 
hardens to men and loses qualities of soul. 

There is still another element in produc- 
^The social tion — usually forgotten or concealed, but in 
Production some respects the most important of all. 
This is the contribution of the social organ- 
ization. The settler in savage wilds must 
waste a great part of his time and force in 
defending himself against beasts or savage 
man, in making his clearing, in building his 
road, in a thousand disadvantages of unor- 
ganized life. This waste from productivity, 
civilization, the social organization, saves. As 
government, it assures to a man the peace- 
24 



OF BUSINESS 

ful use of all his powers for productive pur- 
pose, and gives him numberless facilities, for 
which it gets pay in taxes. As a public cor- Taxes 
poration, it builds him a turnpike and gets 
pay in tolls, or a railroad which replaces 
road, wagon, and horse, and gets pay in 
freight ; or supplies him gas replacing the 
house-made ''dip'' at great cooperative sav- 
ing. . The voluntary payment for tolls, freight, 
and light is itself proof that it would cost the 
user more to build his own road, transport 
his own goods, make light for himself — 
despite all grumblings at high charges ; but 
the compulsory payment of the road tax, the 
water rate, the school tax, the pay of police, 
and other communal expenses increasing 
public facilities or promoting the common 
weal, obscures their economic value. The 
school tax, for instance, gives better human 
tools and saves cost of prisons. Thus taxes Taxes may- 
are a part of cost, and with the increase of f^crea^Q °^ 
public facilities perhaps an increasing part of Price 
cost, though again these, rightly levied and 
applied, may decrease price. Productive 
taxes, as these may be called, are among 
the best investments of the community and 
of the business man. But there is nothing 
that more needs watching as a factor in cost, 
25 



Mis- 
directed 
Taxation 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

for because of its compulsory character no 
factor is so liable to abuse. In mis-directed 
or "crooked'' taxation, taxes do increase 
. prices, and are at last paid by those who can 
least afford to pay them. Thus a tax on 
mortgages raises the rate of interest to the 
borrower, as surely as the price of telegrams 
was raised to the sender by the penny stamp 
required as a war tax. The degenerate coun- 
tries of Latin Europe, as Spain and Italy, 
are kept in grinding poverty — prices and 
all cost of living and working increased, in- 
dustry thwarted, export and therefore im- 
port trade blocked — because of excessive 
taxes. Confiscating sometimes half the crop 
or the wage, levied upon production and ex- 
change, these taxes are not used to increase 
public facilities, but to withdraw for wasteful 
armies and navies men from production and 
capital from use, to pay interest on huge 
public debts, and to bar every gate towards 
prosperity. The commercial greatness of 
England has been developed in great part by 
confining taxes to their productive use. 



Product 
pays aU 



Product pays all — rent, wages, interest, 
taxes, profit. Of these five elements, rent 
and wages and taxes, all being pay for labor 
26 



OF BUSINESS 

or labor-saving facilities, tend constantly to 
increase ; interest and profit to decrease, "the 
pay of labor increases as modern invention 
and improvement develop machines or 
methods by which, from the same expendi- 
ture of human labor, product is increased. 
Rent, the pay for the use of the more pro- Rent and 
ductive land, is the equivalent of so much whtT Wages 
labor saved from wasteful expenditure on 
poorer land, which needs more labor to pro- 
duce like product. A fall in rent, in fact, 
usually betokens loss : in the case of lands in 
New England thrown out of cultivation by 
the opening of more productive lands at the 
West, or of shops in a city left vacant by the 
offering of better facilities elsewhere, a loss to 
the proprietor offset by economic gain to the 
community ; in the case of mistaken improve- 
ments or of trade depression, a loss to all. 
Taxes, as the pay for public facilities, are the 
equivalent of so much labor saved from pri- 
vate expenditure, as for roads, water, watch- 
ing ; though, when wrongly levied so as to 
increase cost or check trade, or wastefully 
expended otherwise than in the increase of 
public facilities, they may be a large factor in 
increasing price. Thus both rent and taxes 
follow the law of labor-pay and increase with 
27 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

wages, and though a part of cost do not nor- 
mally increase price. The rise of wages 
keeps pace with increase of product and de- 
crease of price ; for labor gets an increasing 
share of product as interest and profit dimin- 
ish. But as '' time wages " rise, " piece- 
wages " fall, in a perpetual process of bal- 
ancing the return for the day's work, because 
by help of inventions a worker can do more 
and more piece-work within the day and its 
pay. 

With higher wages, increased prosper- 
As Prices ity, greater savings and lower prices, the 
rfse ^^^^^ whole world wants more and buys more ; 
greater purchasing power means increased 
demand. Thus there can be no over-pro- 
duction of the things that are wanted : it is 
mis-directed production of things not wanted, 
or the interference with the purchasing power 
of the people by mis-directed distribution, 
that brings about '' bad times *' and the un- 
healthy state where prices fall below cost and 
industry is checked. The whole trend of 
industrial evolution is to pay more for men 
and less for things, and thus results the 
seeming contradiction that as prices fall, 
wages rise. 

- 28 



rise 



OF BUSINESS 

The employment of one man by another, 
partnerships, cooperative associations on a Cooperation 
large scale, have been steps in industrial rations^^^" 
organization, utilizing the cooperation of 
labor for the common good. Those who had 
savings loaned them as capital for such busi- 
ness, conducted by others, or intrusted them 
to a super-cargo or ship-captain as ^^ ventures " 
in foreign trade. But as savings and wealth 
increased, there was evolved a new coopera- 
tion of capital in the joint-stock company, or 
corporation, through which investors might 
delegate the responsibility of direction to 
directors or managers chosen by themselves. 
At first each shareholder was liable, as a 
partner, for all the joint debts. To abate 
this risk, the state was invoked, and laws 
were passed authorizing ^* limited liability '* 
companies, in which the sharer was relieved 
of pecuniary responsibility beyond his share. 
Thus the modern corporation is a creature 
of the state, an artificial person, '' having no 
soul," that is, without personal responsibility, 
and ^^ never dying," that is, without prospect 
of the property changes, sometimes remedial 
and wholesome, wrought by death. 

A personally directed business, other con- 
ditions being even, has advantage over a 
29 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

corporate business ; but perpetuity, the limi- 
The Rivalry tation of liability, and ready transferability of 
tion°^^°^^" ownership, inviting large aggregation of cap- 
ital which in turn made possible and neces- 
sary the highest directive ability, over-bal- 
anced this natural advantage. With increase 
of business, the extra expenses of corporate 
management were offset by great directive 
skill ; and private concerns doing a smaller 
business at larger proportionate cost were 
supplanted by the competition of public com- 
panies. But now rival corporations entered 
the field, and '^railroad wars,'* "gas wars," 
and other " cut-throat competition," under- 
selling below cost, demoralized investment 
and industry. Without state interference, 
this suicidal course would have found its end 
in the bankruptcy of the mis-directed and 
losing company and the survival of the wiser 
and stronger under bettered conditions. But 
the natural results of "over-capitalization," 
" stock- watering " or mis-direction were pre- 
vented by the corporate privilege and by the 
devices of "receiverships" and "re-organi- 
zation," too often pretexts for new spolia- 
tion. To forestall or mitigate this corporate 
competition, " pools " were devised to divide 
business or regulate prices — but these 
30 



OF BUSINESS 

proved only a temporary and inadequate 
makeshift. 

Combinations into ''Trusts," so called and 
mis-called because arranged through trustees, " Trusts *' 
were formed to surmount this competition. 
The government had set an example in the 
Post-office monopoly, against which compe- 
tition was prohibited by law as a misde- 
meanor, and this first unification of a great 
industry had been of such benefit to the 
great body of the people that its pecuniary 
losses were condoned or overlooked. The 
consolidation of local railroads into through- 
line systems, initiated by the elder Vander- 
bilt, to the great benefit of traffic and travel, 
was a long stride toward the unification of 
industries. The pioneer Trust, unifying the 
oil industry, having neither governmental 
privilege nor municipal franchise, obtained 
monopolistic control by purchase of lands, 
by obtaining railroad discriminations, by per- 
secution of business rivals, and by corruption 
and domination of legislatures — with the 
mixed result that it gave the public a staple 
product of better quality at lowered price and 
produced overweening fortunes, one of them 
the greatest burden of wealth in the whole 
world, at vast cost of public demoralization. 
31 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

This unification of industries has now ex- 
tended into most fields, particularly those of 
municipal franchises, often with great possi- 
bilities of benefit — economically within the 
industry in the prevention of waste from mis- 
directed competition and commercially to the 
public in standardizing and bettering product 
within or below former price. 

But these possible advantages are ob- 
Their Evils scured, if not offset, by evident and great 
disadvantages. Trusts have too often sought 
first of all to maintain or increase prices, 
sometimes in face of a natural reduction in 
prices which, effective despite their efforts, 
has given a trust credit it has not deserved. 
Moreover, the separation of the ^^ hand " from 
the head is carried to an extreme in which 
consciousness of and conscience for human 
relations are eliminated. Worst of all are the 
great public demoralizations — politically by 
the corruption of public and business life and 
financially by the conscienceless methods of 
'* promoters " and the reckless manufacture 
by bankers of '' watered " securities to the 
full margin of present or prospective in- 
come. Thus the creatures of the state have 
become captors of the state, demoralizing 
public conscience and private standards. 
32 



OF BUSINESS 

Men upright in personal relations, when re- 
lieved of personal responsibility, will permit 
a corporation of which they are shareholders 
or directors to do what they would not do 
for themselves ; and a corporate manager is 
too often expected to dull his conscience into 
acquiescence in bribery by the soothing fal- 
lacy that as a trustee for those who have 
committed money to his keeping, he had 
better give over a part to highwaymen than 
risk the loss of all. 

The' evils that the state has done the state 
must undo — not by a state socialism which The Rem- 
may prove more tyrannous than the tyrants ^f^ Publi- 
it would overthrow, but by ** turning on the 
light'' of publicity upon the creatures of 
public privilege, and in cases of public fran- 
chises by recovering to the people through 
the sovereign right of eminent domain or of 
taxation, values which the public create and 
to which they have just right. State-created 
corporations should be state-regulated. Or- 
ganized under public authority, they are zpso 
facto open to public inspection and respon- 
sible to public opinion. Publicity through 
public accountants, as in the national banking 
system, is a chief safeguard, in a fulfillment 
by state authority of the system partially 
33 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

developed by the New York Stock Exchange 
in ** listing '' securities, so that stockholders 
and the public may have the full facts as to 
organization, valuation, and administration. 
A private business is no one's business but 
Public Re- the owner's, but he is personally liable and 
sponsibility j-esponsible ; the public business of a corpo- 
ration, freed from private liability, must ac- 
cept public responsibility. The law of New 
York requires that corporate shares may be 
paid-in only in cash or property, dollar for 
dollar, but in the absence of public account- 
ing for property value, huge stock-jobbing 
operations, financed by men personally of 
good repute, fleece the public. When the 
public knows all, when the dangers from 
limited liability and delegated responsibility 
are met by full publicity, when social ostra- 
cism waits the man whose fortune or power 
is won at cost of conscience, when a due 
share of return to the public is required for 
public privilege, the ills which corporations 
have brought upon the state may find cure 
without sacrifice of the benefits they bring 
and without further surrender of personal 
rights and opportunities to a still huger 
state-created machine of socialism. 



34 



OF BUSINESS 

As private enterprise and individual cooper- 
ation have been made more difficult by the Labor Com- 
emergence of directing ability, especially in ^^^^^^^^ 
the development of great corporations, the 
individual worker has felt the more need to 
combine with other workers to *' hold his 
own/' The first impulse in such combina- 
tions is a policy of restricting work. For a 
first effect of saving labor — by wiser direc- 
tion, a better method, a new machine — is 
to throw some man out of work, to make him 
for the moment useless, to "take the bread 
out of his mouth/' Here, as elsewhere, 
Nature's readjustments for the race are at the 
cost of displacement to the individual. But 
it is poor solace to a starving man to tell him 
that next year he will have more bread than 
he wants. This is why labor has always 
been against labor-saving machinery ; why it 
drove Arkwright from his home, broke up the 
spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, and mobbed 
Jacquard ; why in face of the proved fact that 
in the long run invention helps labor, it has 
in the short run opposed inventions. Here is 
the key to the conflict, mistakenly called 
between labor and capital, which is really a 
protest of self-defense by the laborer against 
the director of industry who saves labor and 

35 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

lessens work. Thus organized labor, natu- 
rally enough, first sets itself to increase work, 
to get work and wages for more workers, and 
therefore seeks to restrict apprenticeship, re- 
strict hours, restrict over-time, restrict even 
the amount one man may do in an hour. The 
stated and ^alid reason for an eight-hour day 
is to give the laborer useful and uplifting lei- 
sure ; the immediate motive of the labor or- 
ganizations is to get more days' work for its 
members, and of the laborer to get a higher 
rate per hour and then work over-time. 

Yet restriction is a policy of short-sight. 
The Policy The best service is done by the ship captain 
who brings the largest cargo safe to port by 
the most direct route in the fewest days — 
though his crew gets fewer days' pay. The 
world is the richer. This is real prosperity. 
If the captain is swept overboard in the 
storm, and the rudder breaks, and the cargo 
shifts, and at last ship and cargo and crew 
go down together, the need for new captain, 
new crew, new ship, new cargo " makes 
trade brisk.'' But all that has gone down is 
loss to the world and to each laborer in it. 
This is adversity in masquerade. It is at 
this cost that war and cyclone and the Black 
Death have made '^ business good'' and 

36 



of Restric- 
tion 



OF BUSINESS 

*' wages high/' Restriction is the natural 
impulse of self-defense against progress — as 
the owners of cows opposed Stephenson's 
railroad. The story of the lad Humphrey 
Potter, tying a string to the engine valves 
that he might have time to play, and throw- 
ing himself out of a job, is the eternal type 
of labor-saving progress. But progress can- 
not be '* downed.'* The invention comes into 
use ; the next generation has its work done 
by the machine, but gets higher pay for 
tending that. 

The mainspring of business is the desire 
of each worker, whether with hands or brain, The " Open 
to market his labor or product to the best ^*^°^" 
advantage, to get for it the most money or 
the most reward. This leads him to desire 
the widest market for himself, and the nar- 
rowest for his rival. The makeshift of re- 
striction is thus a first impulse alike of the 
labor union, the merchants' guild, the trading 
nation. Each wants the ^' open door" for 
itself — but a shut door against its competi- 
tors. Each wants its ^^home market" and 
the foreign market too, forgetful that the 
foreign market is simply the aggregated 
home markets of other peoples. This policy 
becomes the war theory of trade and is the 
37 



True Trade 
Peace not 
War 



The true 
Value of 
Trades 
Unions 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

easy road to actual war, industrial or between 
nations. But a true commerce is the evan- 
gel of peace ; in true trade, each person gains, 
else he would not trade ; ** a good bargain is 
one in which both gain." A man needs not 
only to work at his best, but to get from his 
neighbor work at the neighbor's best ; then 
all are best off. If he is good at shoemaking 
and his neighbor at tailoring, he sells shoes 
and buys clothes. It does n't pay to set a 
man to do a boy's work, nor a boy to do a 
man's work. When the carpenters' union 
in New York sought to prevent work on 
wooden sashes or mouldings made outside 
the city, and the masons to prevent work on 
stone dressed outside the jurisdiction of the 
union, they not only declared war against 
fellow-workers in the lumber regions of 
Michigan and the quarries of Vermont, but 
by preventing labor-saving in manufacture 
and transportation, they increased the cost 
of building and limited their own field of 
work. 

As an injustice to one is an injury to all, 
conversely a benefit to all is a good to each. 
The true and great value of trades unions is 
not in 'Mowning" the outside workingman 
as_a ^'scab," or waging always costly and 

38 



OF BUSINESS 

often wasteful strikes, or imposing restric- 
tions upon industry and production, but in 
raising the standard of workmanship among 
the members, so that the union "card" is a cer- 
tificate which outside workmen become ambi- 
tious to gain, as their best recommendation ; 
in organizing methods of adjusting wages 
and of arbitration ; in promoting improve- 
ments within the trade ; and in providing as 
benefit associations for members thrown 
temporarily out of work without fault of their 
own, or in cases of sickness, infirmity, and 
death. Thus the individual has the benefit 
of the organization in " holding his own *' 
by the methods of peace and not of war. 
The extraordinary rise in the pay of house- 
servants, without trade union help, shows 
that it is by natural laws of supply and de- 
mand rather than by artificial pressure that 
increase of wages is brought about. 

Restriction is garbed always in guise of 
the upholding of the standard of wages or " The For- 
of living, or the protection of guild rights, ^^n JJ 
or the promotion of home industry; but it 
overlooks always " the forgotten man *' who is 
its victim, and it is too short-sighted to fore- 
see how its boomerang returns to its own 
hurt. The free workingman becomes a 
39 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

"scab/* and smuggling is promoted as a 
criminal industry. *' The forgotten man '* 
is always to be remembered in a full account- 
ing of human affairs. 

The trader is another man who gets " pro- 
Exchange : fit " by virtue of his direction, not of produc- 
the Trader ^^^^^ ^^^ ^£ exchange. The merchant or 

shop-keeper does for the community the 
service of facilitating barter by enabling any 
buyer to get what he wants, where and when 
he wants it, by purchase with money. This 
is a great economic gain over the direct bar- 
ter of labor or ^' swap '' of goods, as when the 
farmer had to find a shoemaker who wanted 
potatoes before he could get a pair of shoes. 
A trader who supplies to the trading public 
what it wants earns a fair profit for his time, 
skill, and good judgment ; one who mistakes 
the public demand and thus promotes mis- 
direction of production pays the penalty in 
'* failure *' and ''forced sale '' of his goods at 
a price which will induce buyers to buy at a 
''bargain'' — requiring the seller to sell at 
loss and inducing the buyer to buy what he 
does n't need. It is not wholesome morally 
to get something for nothing or wholesome 
economically to have price below cost. But 
40 



OF BUSINESS 

within the margin of profit, competition be- 
tween shops, in meeting the public demand 
and selling at the lowest charge for the ser- 
vice rendered, fulfills the law of progress. 

The same causes and conditions which in 
production have developed trusts, with their Department 
good and their evil, have in this field devel- ^^^^^^ 
oped the '* department stores '' of " wholesale 
retailers/' These command manufacturers, 
import through their own foreign buyers, 
lower prices by dispensing with the profits of 
numerous middlemen, unify retailing by 
bringing all kinds of goods together under 
one roof, to the great time- labor- and money- 
saving of the public; and demoralize trade 
and ruin more conservative traders by '* bar- 
gain-counter '* sales not less demoralizing 
to the feverish throng of women buyers to 
whose cupidity these gaming-tables appeal. 
Against them restrictive legislation even 
more fatuous and futile than that directed 
against trusts has been proposed, but the 
only cure for the evils which for the time 
accompany their real service to the public is 
to be found in a wholesome public opinion 
and private good sense, that will restrain 
buyers from patronizing shops which cater 
recklessly to public greed, and from buying 
41 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

at any price what they don't want. These 
great marts of trade are the modern equiva- 
lent of the ancient market-place, centralizing 
again the retail trade cumbrously distributed 
among petty shops, as the great factory has 
centralized to advantage the varied product 
of household industries ; and the small shop- 
keeper, earning a precarious living and often 
bankrupt, may find safer place in the great 
organization, in an interdependence which is 
surer than his independence. The neigh- 
borhood shops, which keep a local store of 
goods for immediate demand, as the baker, 
the butcher, the grocer, are more likely to 
hold their own against centralized competi- 
tion, because they better serve the neighbor- 
hood need. 

There are other classes of workers who do 
The Profes- not add value to things but to men, doing 
personal instead of material service — from 
the ^'learned professions'' down to the 
household servant. The ministry to souls 
and bodies — of the preacher inspiring spir- 
itual and moral development, of the lawyer 
promoting justice, of the doctor keeping the 
physical machinery in repair, of the teacher 
educating youth, of the author and the artist 
42 



sions 



OF BUSINESS 

uplifting and delighting by literature and 
art, of the journalist and the librarian 
spreading intelligence — is all a part of the 
world's work, in these ancillary callings. 
And household service, though not often 
does it " make drudgery divine,'' is division 
of labor with good economic gain, since, by its 
humbler toil, it frees the time and strength 
of those of higher capacity to do their larger 
service in the world. The able men of the 
professions command high remuneration be- 
cause the service is great and the ability 
rare, and they must do their work, which is 
masterful over them, at much sacrifice of 
personal convenience. It is the doctor him- Personal 
self who must answer the call of duty at any ^^^^^® 
hour of day and night ; it is the lawyer in 
person whose ability or eloquence his client 
urgently demands, in proportion as he rises 
to success and fame ; while the administra- 
tor of large affairs may so organize his busi- 
ness as to require his personal presence and 
his hand at the helm only at the convenient 
time or on critical occasion. On the other 
hand, the ** professions " are over-crowded, 
and the average pay reduced, by the multi- 
tudes of half-fit people who throng into 
them, and in dull routine miss the great 
43 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

opportunities these callings present. For, 
next to the statesman and the corporate ex- 
ecutive who handle large affairs of state or 
business in lines of " light and leading/^ the 
professional man, dealing in vital personal 
relations with his fellows, has calling and 
election to uplift those about him into the 
larger life, to give " life more abundantly,'* 
to earn a reward paid not only in mere 
money but in richness of personal life. 

Here, too, is for the most part the work of 

The eco- woman, in the profession of wife and mother, 

tions of^^^^" help-meet of man. Her economic service is 

Woman not less rich because it is a service of love, 

and is not of money reward. A man's 

mother has invested in her service for her 

son, in the frugality and denial which has 

earned for him his education, a capital which 

gives him his value ; and his wife often 

earns the better half of his salary by her 

personal service of devotion to him and by 

her administration of his household. The 

world will be better off when, without loss of 

dignity or affection, a wife may receive credit 

for at least the salary a husband pays to his 

clerk. A household " budget '' for the month 

or year, in place of breakfast wrangles over 

bills and wherewithal to pay them, would 

44 



OF BUSINESS 

redeem many an unhappy home. A sound 
business basis is as necessary for the affairs 
which the wife administers as for those of 
the husband, and forethought is the more 
important. A truer relation of woman with 
economics is one of the great gains of pre- 
sent social development, as the economic 
subservience of woman becomes a thing of 
the past, and the economic interdependence 
of the sexes is more and more recognized. 

With the immense accumulation of wealth 
from increased production and free exchange, The Distri- 
its distribution, as measured in money, has ^eahh^^ 
become the economic problem of our time. 
Wages have risen, labor gets an increasing 
share of product, laborers and probably most 
men the world over are better off in the 
means of life than ever before ; yet the vast 
forces put by the industrial and social organ- 
ization of to-day into the hands of the few 
make them wealthy and powerful to a degree 
that inevitably provokes social discontent. 
The poor are not growing poorer. But the 
rich are growing so much richer — for a man 
with a hundred times the average wealth is 
no longer counted rich, but must multiply 
that again a hundred fold — that the contrast 
45 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

is greater, the social gap wider, with every 
decade. 

This overtopping condition of wealth is nei- 
The modern ther happy for the individual nor wholesome 
utocrat £^^ ^j^^ state. It is not a fortune that makes 
a man fortunate. Croesus was not happy 
either as tyrant or plutocrat. Dante's In- 
ferno had no fate more sad than those in our 
modern life — of men, though their fortunes 
may reach from the hundred toward the 
thousand millions, who bear the curses of 
those whom their methods have ruined and 
from the homes their *' operations *' have 
made desolate; who live in terror of legal 
inquisition or bodily assault ; who are forced 
into corruption to protect their fortunes and 
cannot do the good they would gladly use 
their fortunes for ; whose overwrought nerves 
or destroyed stomachs replace the joys of 
life with tortures as of the damned ; whose 
sons are set against them by the curse of 
money ; whose remains must be sealed under 
mountains of stone against the speculation 
of those. who prey on the dead instead of 
on the living ; who face death and the life to 
come with souls dead and hearts cold from 
lust of gain and brutality of power — horrors 
allxecorded in the careers of one or another 
46 



OF BUSINESS 

Dives of to-day. Greatest of all is the tra- 
gedy of the good man struggling in vain 
against this blighting bane. Heavy indeed 
is the burden of riches, though few fear 
being rich. The shepherd complains that he 
must watch a hundred sheep, but envies the 
man who must care for a million dollars. 
Yet an Astor could use^ as he said, only a 
fair salary for taking care of his fortune — a 
fortune which to his present heirs would seem 
small. 

The solution of this problem of distribution 
is more and more seen to be in the truth that Reclama- 
it is as much by help of the social organiza- Taxation 
tion and machinery as by the productive or 
directive power of any one man that these 
colossal fortunes are evolved. The remedy 
is not in futile attempts to check production 
or saving, or to repress organization, but in 
making sure that a just proportion of product 
is returned to the people through taxation. 
Taxes on production, on trade, on utilized 
savings, on improvements, as buildings per- 
haps made beautiful by lavish outlay, are 
fines Hmiting private wealth-making and pub- 
lic welfare. Taxes on unused wealth, as 
vacant land or hoarded gold, on the rent of 
land, on superior incomes, on corporate privi- 
47 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

leges and returns, on property passing at 
death to owners who have not earned — these 
are contributions reclaiming for the people 
the values given by bounty of Nature or cre- 
ated by help of the community. ^^ Unto 
each, his own '' — to the worker, his share in 
product ; to the trader, his profit ; to the 
saver, the benefit of his stored capital ; but 
also to the people, return of the usufruct of 
the gifts of Nature and their share of the 
wealth all the people have helped to create. 
This is the antipodes of socialism and com- 
The Anti- munism, the logical result of that interlock- 
S^cf Vm ^^S of freedom for each and interdependence 
of all which is the vital spirit of democracy. 
It is thus that while the poor are made 
richer, the rich will not be made poorer. It 
is thus that — in forest preserves, in parks 
and playgrounds, in better roads and cleaner 
streets, in water supply and drainage, in 
schools, libraries, museums, and music, for 
general education and re-creation rather than 
mere personal amusement, in baths and pub- 
lic conveniences — the people will get as a 
common benefit, returns from the social in- 
crement which will give to the democracy 
as a public right what European sovereigns 
lavish upon their subjects as a gift, without 

48 



OF BUSINESS 

surrender, to the delusive paternalism of the 
socialistic state, of the private rights which 
are the bulwark of a free society. It is thus 
that the free man, earning his own living to 
best advantage, will be able to pay his own 
way, and yet enjoy the higher standard 
of life made possible through the common- 
wealth. 

Men work and save that they may use. 
At the last, all production is for the con- Use and 
sumer. Consumption is thus, in economics, ^^^^^ 
**the end of the whole matter.'* But con- 
sumption may be use, in the true sense, or it 
may be waste, the false use. There is thrift 
in spending as well as in saving. It is by 
the consumption of food or fuel that work is 
done ; but our " drink-bill '' wastes us a bil- 
lion dollars annually. The rich man who 
gives a *' ^10,000 ball" is praised for ** mak- 
ing work'* and " circulating money " by his 
extravagance and waste ; but the capitalist 
who invests ^10,000 in an industrial corpo- 
ration or deposits it in a bank to be loaned 
for use, utilizes this in work and wages to 
far better purpose, ** turning over ** his capi- 
tal again and again. The one lets water run 
to waste over the dam ; the other utilizes it 
49 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

to turn the mill-wheels of trade. The loss 
from fire, from the careless treatment of 
food, from the social waste of crime and pau- 
perism, from the industrial waste of unem- 
ployed labor, all in some degree preventable 
in a well-ordered community, are alike injuries 
to the commonwealth, amounting to many 
times the total taxation or the aggregate 
saving. In a great city, the waste of aque- 
duct water is often equal to the use, and this 
is almost true of wealth throughout the 
nation. The poor could be twice as well-to- 
do, and the rich no poorer, if waste were 
prevented and consumption made productive ; 
and this can in large measure be accomplished 
by individual temperance and frugality, by 
thrift in the home, by watch and ward over 
public affairs — the civic virtues which indeed 
democracy needs in economics and in gov- 
ernment alike. 

Because money is the medium of trade 
Money and and the measure of wealth, men mistake the 
symbol for the reality ; forget that money is 
not a good-in-itself, an end, but a means 
only ; and, lacking it, desire it for itself. 
The miser, hoarding gold, is the fool of this 
world, because for a thing useless in itself he 
50 



its Use 



OF BUSINESS 

gives up everything worth having. Barrels 
are useful to measure and transport apples, 
and making or trading barrels is a useful 
business. So with money. Both are useful 
only for use. When the farmer must gather 
his apples and '^ move the crops," if barrels 
or the money to buy them be ^' short," he 
loses his crop. If he has not saved seed, or 
ploughs, or barrels, he must get them, and 
this he does by borrowing money, at the 
South *' on the crop," at the West by pledge 
of his land or on his " credit," which means 
the belief, faith, confidence in him that he 
will pay. 

A bank is a money-shop which lends the 
borrower money on his promise-to-pay, at Banks as 
a cost, in ^^ discount" or "interest," lower ^op^^" 
than the increased price he would have 
to pay the seedsman or plough-maker or 
cooper for goods " on long time." The 
bank has this money on '* deposit" from 
those who have saved wealth, just as the 
seedsman has collected seed from those who 
have saved seeds, and the bank makes a 
profit as the seedsman does by getting a 
price somewhat higher than it has to pay. 
This price must cover the risk of loss by 
bad debts. If there is plenty of seed in store, 
51 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

and seed-shops, but not too many, compete 
for the trade, and the farmer is *' sure pay," 
he gets his seed cheap. So also with " easy 
money," a safe banking system with local 
banks, and '* good credit," the price of money, 
the rate of interest or discount, is low. 

The farmer may sell his crop of apples to a 
The Round picker, and he to the store-keeper, and he to 
of Credit ^.j^^ commission agent, and he to the wholesale 
fruit-dealer, yet the apples are not transferred 
nor money passed till they are picked, bar- 
reled, and shipped to the city. So in a like 
round, the bank sells the use of money to the 
farmer, taking his bond or promise-note, puts 
the amount to his account, permits him to 
draw checks, and receives at last what has been 
paid him for the apples, without handling 
money at all except when the holder of a check 
asks gold or currency for it. But the apples 
or money must be there, when the receipt 
promising to deliver the apples or the "bill " 
promising to pay gold is presented. This is 
the ** course of trade " when the West has to 
"move the crops," and borrows money from 
the East to do it ; happily the West also has 
now money to lend to the East when it is 
needed for Eastern mills. This is the round 
wfeich corresponds in economics to the 
52 



OF BUSINESS 

wonder-workings of water throughout nature, 
as from the ocean the sun draws vapor to 
make the clouds, and these shed rain upon 
the earth to water bounteous crops, and the 
forests gather drops for the brooks, and 
these make the streams which are dammed 
to turn the wheels of mills and slake the 
thirst of cities, and at last the rivers return 
to the sea in the completed cycle. General 
confidence, safe banking with banks through- 
out the country wherever needed, sound cur- 
rency, laws just to loanerand borrower alike, 
good credit, — these lower the rate of inter- 
est and help every man to earn a surer and 
easier living. 

Here also moral qualities are at the foun- 
dation, and business proves to be built on 
right and faith. Not money, but the love of Business 
money, and the lust of its power, is the root R^i^h°and 
of all evil. The man who uses money to get Faith 
power to get more, with no end but money- 
getting in view, blinds the eyes of his soul. 
For in the personal life, neither money, nor 
wealth, nor power, is a good-in-itself or in 
itself a pleasure. 

'' Business is business,'' it is said, and there 
is no place in it for sentiment or morals or 
53 



Human 

Qualities 

count 



Panics and 
hard Times 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

Christianity. This is the half-truth which is 
more misleading than the lie. Money in- 
deed seeks the cheaper market, as water runs 
down hill ; thus equilibrium, the level of 
prices, is preserved. But in dealing not 
with things, but with human beings and the 
makers of things, human qualities count, and 
** morals ** in the long run win. There is 
indeed no " sentiment " in the fact that a 
great railway corporation cannot afford to 
employ a drunkard, yet that rule has been 
one of the most efficient motives toward 
the virtue of temperance. Morality is knit 
into the very fibre of business. The cheat 
prospers for the time, but not for the life- 
time. A lying salesman can't sell twice on 
the same road. England has lost much of the 
China trade in cottons because Manchester 
stuffs were so loaded with clay that ** Amer- 
icans,'' by contrast, became the name for 
honest goods. And ** panics," *^hard times," 
and all the ills they bring, come not so 
much because Nature denies her bounty or 
work and trade cease, as because fear takes 
the place of hope, public confidence is fol- 
lowed by distrust, wealth is withdrawn from 
use and hoarded unused in terror of loss. 
This is often but the reaction from '* booms " 
54 



OF BUSINESS 

and speculation into which a community 
has been led, through its own spirit of reck- 
less greed, by *' confidence men " who call 
themselves ''promoters/' Steadfastness in 
well-doing and resistance of the temptation 
of gaining without work, of getting with- 
out giving value, are the moral qualities 
which safeguard business and the common- 
wealth. 

For most men, and for many women, the 
greater part of their working hours is spent Ideal Re« 
in the every-day relations of business life. Ifractical^ 
These relations, not less vital because they Life 
concern the problem of earning a living, 
are rarely cultivated in full view of the great 
opportunity they present. Not only should 
a merchant with his clerks, a manufacturer 
with his workmen, provide fair hours and 
good light and fresh air and due warmth 
and reasonable rest and facilities of work ; 
vastly beyond these are the courtesy and 
helpfulness and sympathy and justice and in- 
spiration which those who have may give 
to those who want, securing in turn the 
loyalty and devotion of service which are 
their response. Coordination rather than 
subordination should be the spirit of business 
organizations. The golden rule may make 

SS LofC. 



THE ARTS OF LIFE 

golden days despite leaden skies, if the day's 
work of wearying routine have in it the 
light of human sympathy and helpfulness 
and cheer. And in turn "it pays '' to have 
a cheerful mill, or store, or office, for de- 
crease of friction means increase of work ; 
and the man cheerfully ready to dare and do 
may be worth twice the salary of another 
whose first thought is always that '* it can't 
be done/' Throughout all the relations and 
circumstances of the business life, morals 
tell. 

Last of all, the art of business, as an art 
The Frui- of life, has its fruition in the development of 
Business character, through the discipline of affairs 
and in that earned leisure wherein re-creation 
has its full meaning. The strenuous life of 
the world finds its complement, its fulfillment, 
in the serene life of the spirit. Business is 
to most men the great school for the forma- 
tion of character — that which abides in and 
is the man. Thus business should provide, 
no less by the discipline of life than by the 
earning of a living, the foundation of personal 
development and social life. It is the trunk 
of the tree from which should blossom forth 
the flower and the fruit of life. 



56 



PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON & CO, 

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
U.S. A. 



CJje arts of iLtfe 

BY RICHARD ROGERS BOWKER 

i6mo, pp. viii + 306, cL, $1.25 

A book which may be said to fix the highest watermark of the pro- 
gressive thought of the closing century. The opening sentence of the 
first chapter — the Foreword — contains the* fundamental idea of the 
whole book : " Life is an art." — Library News-Letter , Wilkes Barre, Fa. . 

Life is presented through its various forms of expression as the high- 
est of all the arts, and this art is perfected by education, not only through 
its technical processes but through business, politics, and religion ; per- 
sonality attaining its complete growth only as it is drawn out through 
these large activities, and only as it adequately expresses itself in these 
comprehensive relationships. — The Otitlook. 

"The Arts of Life" teaches that of all the knowledge in fife the 
knowing how to live is the most important. The perfect life is that 
which is in accord with the underlying, pervasive, universal scheme of 
things. — Public Opinion, 

The essayist is thoughtful, original, comprehensive, and classic. In 
many places he is ideal, brilliant, and very suggestive, well-nigh a master 
in thought and expression. — Zion^s Herald. 

Mr. Bowker's own thoughts are worth being thus recorded for the 
benefit of others. But the indirect interest of his book, its stimulating 
influence, will be to many of his readers quite as real a reason for enjoy- 
ing what he has written. He writes in an easy, fluent style which still 
does not lack acceptable crispness and force. What he has to say 
invariably is said well, although with no affectation or parade. — The 
Congregationalist. 

We will not venture to say that the book contains no error ; but we 
do say that it contains in little space very much important truth ; truth 
well put, easily understood, and such as — to use a phrase of Lord 
Bacon's, of whose essays Mr. Bowker's sometimes remind us in more 
than their titles — comes home to men's business and bosoms. — Boston 
Advertiser. 

The whole volume is an attractive treatment of the many questions of 
social economics that are every day giving thinking people food for 
thought. Mr. Bowker is clear in his argument and charming in the 
purity of his diction, and the reputation of the Riverside Press for 
artistic work is fully maintained. — Spriiigfield Republican. 

In an age so full of feverish eagerness to drink the wine of life to the 
lees and wait not, we may well be grateful for every such calm survey of 
the larger possibilities of existence and its finer aspirations, and no one 
can read Mr. Bowker's volume without feeling that the atmosphere of 
his work-a-day world has been cleared somewhat by the breath of some 
diviner air blown upon him from the heights. — The Dial. 



Very seldom indeed has a more illuminating word been written on 
education. — Hartford Coiirant, 

^X IBtt^ttTtjSjS (^^^ separate form. i6mo, pp. 54, cl., 50c.) 

The essays on business and politics are the most striking and most 
valuable. In the former we have an admirable account of labor, capital, 
trusts, wages, profit, — in fact, all the questions so prominent in our 
modern economic life. — N. V. Commerciat Advertiser. 

SL't f^OttttCp (^^^ separate form. i6mo, pp. ()'], cl., 50c.) 

' The essay on politics is especially well-conceived and luminous. It is 
full of such information as the American citizen ought to know. — 
Church Stajtdard, Phila. 

His essay on politics is one of the best things that we have lately 
read. Not that we accept all it contains ; but what it presents is so 
clearly presented and the temper of its style is so reserved and fair that 
reading it is like listening to the talk of an urbane and diplomatic man 
of the world. — The Lidepende^it. 

It is the work of a thoughtful man, who would see America built up 
on the good which lies ready in the other nations to our hand, if we 
would but look for this rather than for the evil. It is throughout a 
book of reconcilements, and of proof that life, with many sides, has one 
heart. — Chicago Eveni7ig Post. 

It is occasion for thankfulness that there are such wise, brave, and 
inspiring books as " The Arts of Life." It is an optimistic, not an easy- 
going faith that influences the treatment of these subjects, and the 
chapter on " Politics " is noteworthy in its firm and brilliant handling of 
the significance of our American form of government, with its mistakes, 
perils, and triumphs. — The Living Age, Boston. 

m meltgton 

The chapter on religion is a noble expression of broad and sympa- 
thetic thought and feeling. — Library News-Letter^ Wilkes Ba^'re^ Pa. 

It is one more contribution to the mass of argument which seeks to 
persuade those thoughtful enough to read it that the kingdom of God is 
within us and that environment cannot shake our soul's peace if we will 
that it shall not. The white light of this great truth dawned upon the 
world nineteen centuries ago. Such books as " The Arts of Life " are 
prisms ; they help us to see the component parts of the steady ray. — 
Brooklyn Eagle. 

Boston and New York 
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